Fifty things that universities are still getting wrong on safety and wellbeing.

1.     Despite an increase in awareness around mental health, student and staff safety and wellbeing is still not a priority for universities across teaching, research, and pastoral care.

2.    There is a lack of clear definition and focus. Meaning terms like ‘safety’, ‘self-care,’ ’wellbeing’, and ‘mental health’ are often used interchangeably and rarely explained.

3.    Safety and wellbeing largely remains an optional topic that is not taken seriously enough. Particularly when it comes to funding research on this topic, or investing in top-down strategies from university management, research councils and professional bodies that prioritise safety and wellbeing through all areas of academia. In some locations it is not even a consideration.

4.    There is inadequate leadership on health and safety generally, and emotional wellbeing in particular.

5.    Inconsistent action, planning and implementation within and between academic institutions results in some projects, topics, individuals and professions getting safety and wellbeing support and others receiving little or nothing.

6.    A lack of clarity over whose responsibility it is to address safety and wellbeing throughout academia means either there are often no dedicated staff to address or progress issues. Alternatively, Health & Safety staff may be overstretched, or assumed to only tackle site related issues (e.g. fire safety or building regulations).

7.    If adverse events, accidents, or tragedies arise universities often seek to avoid negative publicity or cover up problems. This prevents plans being put in place to prevent similar incidents in future; may leave predators in situ; fail to fix harmful spaces or situations; or provide clear answers to victims, or bereaved families.

8.    If covered, safety and wellbeing is regularly reduced to one-off activities, short talks, self-directed learning that may be inadequate to address complex or systemic harms, barriers and risks.

9.    Although there is a growing evidence base of research on academic mental health, and range of guidance, protocols, concordats and regulations on Research Culture; Integrity, Health & Safety; and wellbeing these are either not widely known about, nor cited or applied.

10. There's a common assumption that safety is the thing that's dealt with elsewhere, by someone else.

11. No dedicated time, budgets, or focus for institutions and individuals to tackle safety and wellbeing issues across teaching, research and pastoral care. And for those who do undertake this work there is no adequate credit, reward, or respect.

12. Poor communication between departments, institutions and research councils and other organisations either leads to needless repetition, or major gaps.

13. Lack of organisational memory and no embedded practices, policies, or campus-wide programmes, meaning good ideas and examples of good practice are lost.

14. An ongoing inability to connect with wider external services (e.g. the NHS, or Health and Safety charities and organisations), frequently caused by staff and students lacking authority to bring change; being disempowered; or having limited time, energy, or enthusiasm to do anything.

15. Failure to connect internally, across institutions, or through colleges and schools limits opportunities to share pathways and experiences, swap examples of good practice, observing what doesn’t work, or any ability to anticipate safety problems.

16. Safety and wellbeing are left to individual staff with an interest in this issue, but not necessarily experience or status, to fix.

17. Serious problems or sensitive topics get priority, ignoring that challenges and difficulties may emerge in any area of teaching, pastoral care, and research and many routine and mundane roles require proper health and safety checks, equipment, and regular reviewing.

18. Systemic harms are ignored or downplayed. The danger isn’t “out there”, but in fact is often caused or worsened by the university itself.

19. Simplistic, individualised, cheap and superficial fixes (e.g. a mindfulness webinar) are offered instead of fully funded, detailed, timely and meaningful interventions and activities.

20. If safety and wellbeing support exists, it will not be tailored to diverse need.

21. Often what is offered under the banner of health and safety, or safety and wellbeing is individualised, culturally irrelevant, inappropriate, or insensitive.

22. Inequalities exist within departments, teams, or projects. Meaning some staff do get protection or training – yet act in oppressive or extractive ways towards others (e.g. colleagues, participants, wider communities, or the environment).

23. If safety and wellbeing training is provided to students or staff it tends to be linked to sensitive research topics, dangerous locations, hazardous experimental materials, or trauma linked to secondary data analysis. All of which is reasonable. But it overshadows multiple other practical but vital issues (e.g. travel, terrain, phones, connectivity, food and shelter, conferences, social media, lack of equipment, the hostile environment to name a few).

24. Safety and wellbeing plans and protocols tend to be reactive rather than proactive, usually enacted following an accident or serious incident that may have been entirely preventable.

25. Bureaucratic, restrictive and inflexible checklists, rules or regulations linked to Health & Safety (but having little to do with welfare and wellbeing) may be enforced by the university. None of which are adaptable for or conducive to inclusive, fair and accessible teaching, research, or pastoral care.

26. There's a widespread expectation that students and staff will make up their own safety and wellbeing plans, using their own systems, and with their own money, but without any training, supervision, or advice.

27. Safety and wellbeing support, if it exists, isn’t available to all students equally. Meaning those who’re part time, precarious, on placement, mature students, International students, who’re disabled or chronically sick, self-funding, LGBTQ+, or from the global majority are far more likely to be disadvantaged.

28. Safety and wellbeing programmes aimed at staff are focused primarily on full-time academics, and to a latter extent part-time scholars and administrative or technical staff. Other ancillary staff (cleaners, porters, security, site teams etc) are completely left out but may be more vulnerable to harms within and by academic institutions.

29. There remains huge resistance to funding research on safety and wellbeing as it means admitting there are deep rooted problems within academia. If safety and wellbeing are discussed they are often not given the gravitas they deserve and more likely branded something vague like ‘wellbeing’ or ‘academic mental health’ over safety, justice, and rights.

30. Lack of collegiality among practitioners and researchers studying safety and wellbeing leads to toxic practices like competition; unnecessary reinvention; and tying research to career progression and metrics rather than whole sector change. Thus undoing a lot of the good intentions underpinning safety research and practice, particularly laid down by minoritised and activist scholars and communities in the past.

31. The need for safety and wellbeing planning is interpreted by many working in universities, especially at a senior level, as a sign of incompetence, lack of commitment, or weakness. Staff may be given harmful messages under the banner of motivation or career progression. For example celebrating overwork; maintaining 'suffering is a badge of honour' or 'pain is part of the process'; implying stress is a 'gift'; or the university takes priority over everything. In such an environment it's also commonplace to find Health & Safety, Ethics and other legal frameworks ignored or attempted to be side-stepped.

32. There is an unwillingness to learn from safety and wellbeing models or systems used in other industries. Or, frustratingly, models and systems from other industries are adopted without checking they’re fit for purpose and used even if they're inadequate or broken.

33. Holistic approaches; local and global awareness; and deep understanding of issues, people and communities are ignored in favour of fragmented, single-issue and context-free models or plans.

34. Avoiding whole-organisation and joined-up approaches when trying to integrate safety and wellbeing into teaching, research and pastoral care.

35. Harms may often arise through lack of infrastructure, instruction, supervision, planning, equipment, and managing expectations. Increasing the likelihood of risks, errors, accidents, stress, alongside a reluctance to report concerns or ask questions.

36. Inconsistency is commonplace. One familiar example: there may be a clear protocol for lab safety but that won’t extend to PI training in managing teams or emotionally supporting researchers. Another example: artificial hierarchies of risk are introduced. Meaning dangerous topics or areas get attention while supposedly safe ones are ignored (e.g. classroom spaces are assumed to be less risky than field settings; in person encounters more emotional than secondary data).

37. Urban and site visits may receive more attention than rural, even though each will have their own requirements for planning and specific safety protocols. Unknown locations may receive less attention due to unfamiliarity, or rely on researchers having local knowledge to build plans that may still be ignored due to prejudice, budgets, or casual attitudes.

38. Plagiarism of research and practice on safety and wellbeing by academics from others working in external organisations, charities and industry is far more widespread than anyone likes to admit.

39. Lack of credit for work already completed, particularly by Indigenous academics, activists, independent academics, unions, or Health & Safety workers. This includes failing to credit the use of protocols, templates, plans, regulations, toolkits, or frameworks that could be used to plan all aspects of research, teaching and pastoral care (along with signposting to additional advice and support).

40. Machismo in some fields, institutions, or departments can lead to increased risk taking, and/or a refusal to prevent or respond to danger and harm.

41. Basic Health & Safety and safety and wellbeing is impossible to maintain within any academic culture that celebrates or fails to deal with overwork, precarity, competition, budget cuts, inadequate resources and bullying.

42. Conversations around safety and wellbeing or academic mental health are permissible – but only if they are not political or holding institutions accountable.

43. Technical, administrative and other ancillary staff may have specific Health & Safety needs linked to role (e.g. catering or cleaning regulations and industrial equipment) but may also face specific risks and dangers from students and staff (e.g. violent, abusive, or predatory behaviour) or struggle with working conditions and pay with little to no solidarity from academic colleagues.

44. Minoritised students may be at risk from campus police, security, or wider policies and/or the hostile environment.

45. Events organised in unsafe locations continue to put particular students and staff at more risk (e.g. hosting a conference or fieldwork in a location with stringent anti-LGBTQ+ or anti-abortion laws).

46. The expectation that students or staff will use ‘common sense’ for novel, complex and challenging teaching, research, site visits, fieldwork, events, or pastoral care means mistakes can easily be made and crucial signs of risk, danger, or distress are more likely to be missed.

47. There may be no formalised, centralised and regularly maintained systems for recording risks, adverse events, or concerns, or following up on safety issues if reported. Nor guidance on what safety and wellbeing issues can or should be noted, plus when, where, or how to do that.

48. “If it’s not in an academic journal then it’s not real” – a mentality that means instead of using legislation, protocols, policies, guidance, or direct action to ensure work or study spaces are safe, some kind of a research project must be undertaken instead. While researching safety and wellbeing is extremely necessary, research that delays or blocks pre-existing, valid, legal, or other meaningful evidence, laws, or practices is a safety issue in itself.

49. It’s still left to individuals to flag problems or identify risks. Which may be impossible if they are marginalised, at risk, are working in an additional language, traumatised, or where the university itself is the place of danger. And where students and staff are fully aware whatever they report or request will not be heeded, or sanctions may apply.

50.   Circular conversations mean safety and wellbeing is largely ignored unless it allows for a promotional activity that shows the university in a good light (e.g. a mental health or other awareness day). Or until a preventable tragedy or crisis occurs. After which there may a flurry of excuses, apologies, or activity. This may be inadequate for those directly affected, or cause more distress where there has been a bereavement due to lack of adequate safety and wellbeing plans. Promises to change will inevitably follow, usually with no plan, learning, or sustainable action. And so the cycle repeats again.